


The Luck I've Had Can Make a Good Man Turn Bad

by akisazame



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen, p4week2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adachi awakens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Luck I've Had Can Make a Good Man Turn Bad

**Author's Note:**

> For [#P4week2014](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/p4week2014) Day 5: I Am A Shadow.

Adachi hadn't expected to freefall for so long. Honestly, he hadn't expected to fall at all. For some reason he'd gotten it into his head that going into the TV would spit you out on solid ground, rather than this seemingly endless tumble through space. Finally, _finally_ , he landed on a cold concrete floor surrounded by metal catwalks and walkways. The impact should have broken several of his bones, but after a quick check he determined that he was fine apart from a bruise or two.

There were big studio lights hanging from the scaffolding, but none of them were on, shrouding the area in foggy darkness. Adachi stood up carefully, checking his holster to make sure his gun was still secured there, and tried to gauge his surroundings as much as he could. As far as he could tell, the place where he had landed was a small platform suspended in space, and the walkways connected the platform to other places in the TV world. Besides the darkness, this place didn't seem terrible so far.

He didn't see much point in sitting around on this platform, especially if those damn kids decided to follow him through the TV in the hospital room, so he brushed himself off, picked a path at random, and started walking.

If he was honest with himself, jumping into the TV probably wasn't the best plan he'd ever had. He should have been prepared for this, should have started thinking about contingency plans the second Shirogane had joined up with Souji and his band of friends, but he'd actually tricked himself into thinking that spending a day here and a night there hanging out with the kid would give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. So yeah, when they confronted him in the hospital, he'd had to come up with a plan pretty fast, and "get somewhere the police can't find you" somehow trumped "don't go to the one place those kids will know to look for you."

It was too late now, of course, since Adachi couldn't see anything immediately identifiable as an exit. It only made sense, because if there had been an obvious exit then Yamano and Konishi would have just been able to waltz right out instead of showing up on those television antennae. There had to be an exit _somewhere_ , because how else would Souji and his friends have managed to retrieve every person Namatame kidnapped? Finding that exit seemed to be a sound plan for now. Wouldn't it throw those kids for a loop if they came in here to look for him and he'd already run off to the big city? If only he could see their faces!

There was no way to tell how much time had passed; Adachi's watch had stopped functioning at some point, probably damaged in the fall. After walking for an indeterminate amount of time, Adachi became acutely aware of the fact that there was a set of yellow eyes looming in the darkness, directly ahead of him.

He recoiled immediately, grabbing his gun on pure instinct and pointing it at the disembodied glowing eyes. It was then that he noticed that there wasn't just one set of eyes staring at him, but dozens, maybe a hundred or more. He scanned the area as best he could while still focusing on the first set he'd seen. It was a struggle to keep his hand from shaking while he continued to aim the gun at the spot right between those eyes.

After a few moments of tense stand-off, Adachi realized that whatever was behind those eyes wasn't going to make the first move. In fact, all of the sets of eyes he could see were simply staring without moving, apparently content to simply wait. He couldn't decide if that was more or less unsettling than when he thought they were going to attack at any moment.

He took a cautious step forward, towards the closest set of eyes, not lowering his gun. He had no idea what kind of thing those eyes belonged to, so even if they didn't seem violent at the moment, it was probably better to be safe than sorry. The eyes didn't so much as blink, so Adachi took another step, then a third, until finally he was able to make out a vague shape against the yellow fog.

A vague shape was really all it was. It was small, no taller than his waist, and it had no distinguishable features apart from the unblinking yellow eyes. Adachi glanced to his left and right and saw that he was able to make out a few more shapeless masses attached to pairs of eyes. Was that all that they were? Weird blob things? That wasn't scary at all.

Just as he was starting to lower his gun, Adachi noticed a low humming noise that hadn't been there before. He paused, trying to identify it, but it wasn't anything immediately recognizable. If he had to compare it to something, it sounded like television static. Except, unlike the white noise of a television, this noise was getting steadily louder. Soon it was a cacophony, drowning out all of Adachi's thoughts, and he realized that it sounded almost like laughter.

Were all these weird blob things laughing at him?

Adachi was suddenly furious, overcome with the desire to just start shooting and take down as many of these weird creatures as possible. Even in this weird dark world on the other side of the TV, everyone, every _thing_ , was laughing at him. They'd laughed at him when he was a kid on the playground, too slow and clumsy to play baseball with the other boys. They'd laughed at him when he was a teenager, awkwardly asking out a girl and getting ruthlessly turned down in front of an entire crowd of classmates. They'd laughed at him in the big city, when he'd screwed up and gotten himself reassigned to this stupid little town in the country. And now these fucking blobs were laughing at him too.

He somehow managed to restrain himself. He only had so many bullets, and no way to get more for the foreseeable future. Besides, he didn't even know what these things _were_ , so there wasn't any guarantee that bullets would work on them. Which, now that he thought about it, was the most terrifying thought he'd had so far.

Without warning, the dark blob in front of him started to stretch and re-form, growing taller and thinner until it finally settled into the form of a white snake. The yellow eyes remained, and were looking right at him as the snake coiled and hissed menacingly. Adachi jumped at the sound and he dropped his gun, which clattered to the ground and slid at least two feet away, finally coming to rest right next to the snake.

His brain chose that moment to helpfully remind him that this was a place where people had died. He could die here, right now.

An echoing voice pierced through the din. "I am thou..." Adachi whirled around, trying to find the source of the voice, until he realized it was coming from inside his own head. "Thou art I... the time has come..." There was a whistling in his ears as well, drowning out everything else besides the voice, which was getting louder by the second. "Open thine eyes, and call forth what is within!"

When Adachi looked down, he saw a shimmering blue card in the hand where his gun had been just moments before. He wasn't sure why he did it, but he abruptly closed his hand into a fist, crushing the card into dust.

The whistling in his ears reached a crescendo, and Adachi felt a gust of air behind him. Against his better judgement, he spun around to look, but whatever had formed behind him was already rushing forward to meet the snake. He thought he saw a sword in the strange new humanoid figure's hands, but it wasn't using it, instead rearing back into a kind of roaring motion. A dark sigil formed in the air, then collapsed in on itself, crushing the snake out of existence.

The black and red figure turned and looked right at Adachi, and he noticed that it had the same piercing yellow eyes as the weird shadow creatures. Its gaze was completely different, however, as if it was looking right through him. The immediate threat destroyed, the being shimmered and faded, as though it had never existed in the first place.

Adachi could still feel its presence, though, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, and it made him feel _powerful_. He spun around to make sure none of the other blobs were about to transform or attack, ready to strike out with his Persona if they dared, but it was the opposite; the sets of yellow eyes were disappearing from view, one by one.

He noticed, too, that the laughing had stopped.

( _They were never laughing,_ something whispered, but he ignored it.)

Adachi walked forward and picked up his gun from where it had fallen on the catwalk, checked the safety, and put it back in its holster. He wouldn't be needing it again any time soon, most likely. He took another step, and the metal beneath his foot transformed into asphalt. The metamorphosis spiraled out around him at a rapid pace; twisted street signs sprung up from the cracked and broken ground, bright yellow police tape criss-crossed between piles of rubble, and the sky shifted to a pattern of red and black.

Finding an escape from this TV world was now the furthest thing from his mind.


End file.
